Anne Meacham, 80; Actress Had Roles in Plays by Her Friend Tennessee Williams

Anne Meacham, 80, an actress known for her work in several plays by her friend Tennessee Williams and for a long-running role on the NBC-TV soap opera “Another World,” died Thursday at her home in Canaan, N.Y.

Meacham won an Obie for her performance as the fragile Catharine Holly in “Suddenly, Last Summer,” a Williams’ play that premiered off-Broadway in 1958. She also appeared in Williams’ “In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel” in 1969 and collaborated again with him in a version of “The Gnadiges Fraulein” produced in 1974.

Born July 21, 1925, in Chicago, Meacham studied at the Yale School of Drama. She made her Broadway debut in the short-lived 1952 World War II comedy “The Long Watch,” for which she won the Clarence Derwent Award, a prize for newcomers to New York. She last appeared on Broadway as Gertrude in Tom Stoppard’s “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” in 1968.

On television, Meacham portrayed the oddball maid Louise Goddard on “Another World” from 1972 to 1982.